No!!! Of all the names in the world why this. "Hey bro, let's chat on Element" ,not quite a ring to it.
The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!
Matrix,Riot and Libolm are epic projects, I wish them all the success but man, even Riot was a hard sell as a brand. I would seriously be dissapointed if it loses popularity over this. I don't think the project maintainers understand that their core users/fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.
People who don't know tech rely on branding/brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.
Whatsapp can be an extremely confusing name for non-native English speakers. I'm from Spain and I think 90% of the time I see it written in Spain, it's written wrong (wassap, whasapp, wuatsapp, whatsap, watsap, wuassap, wuassapp, whatsup, watsup, etc.). Sometimes a phonetically "transliterated" version is used instead, like "guasap", which I find more tolerable because at least then it becomes a genuine Spanish word, rather than a botched attempt at writing an English word.
Also, many people don't get the meaning/pun in the name at all (which probably is one of the reasons for writing it wrong). Even to me, with a good English level, it wasn't immediate because "what's up" is a very idiomatic greeting and not one that non-natives (or at least, Spanish people) tend to use in a natural way. It took some time to click in my mind.
That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.
Wow, native English speaker and I didn't even get the pun until this comment. I thought it was a stupid play on "What app should we message each other on?" and thus kind of a silly name. But folks use it regardless.
As a pedantic native English speaker, the name "WhatsApp" has always irritated me somehow. It's just not nice. There's an apostrophe missing, it's two words with intermediate capitalization and no space, "App" in the name of an app is redundant, the "pun" is a bit dumb (does it even really qualify as a pun?)...
But it's clearly worked out well for them, so I guess it's a good thing people like me weren't involved in their naming. shrug
> That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.
This was the case, but the market has changed. At the time, here in Spain Whatsapp was marketed as "like text, but free". We were still spending about 12 cents per SMS back then, or buying silly packages like "100 sms for 10 euro", so getting it was a no brainer. Anyone could have sold that idea.
Nowadays, however, whatsapp is so ubiquitous that I'm not even sure they can be replaced anytime soon, so if someone wants to undertake that task they better have all the help they can get.
Tangential, but I would recommend considering "What's up?" to be the standard informal/low-register idiomatic greeting in American English. It's like "Ce faci?" in Romanian - indeed you'll sometimes get even native English speakers responding with "Good, and you?"
It's a clever name. As an english speaker if some comms app out of spain named QuéPasapp that I wouldn't declare that it's name should be changed just because it's based on a spanish expression? I don't really see the problem. Until there's a universal language that everyone speaks this will happen over and over.
I actually don't like "Signal" either, because it's such a common word that it makes it hard to search for it online. "Telegram" is marginally better, since original telegrams are not very relevant today.
But yeah Element is arguably even worse, it's a super common noun and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with communication.
But in the end these naming discussions are always going to end up as bikeshedding. If the tech is good it'll probably manage to be successful despite its mediocre name.
This name is not mediocre, it's sub par. It's not searchable, memorable on its own or memorable in relation to what it's for. You need at least one of those.
Mint's default image viewer is called Pix. I tried looking up a crash/bug I was getting... it's basically impossible to search for.
I still don't know what some developers are thinking when they name things.
"Hey bro, let's chat on (the) Matrix." Use your favourite client.
People need to be able to find the Element app with a search of Matrix. So the Element Matrix client should work nicely.
Working with a company that used Element as part of it's brand name, it was remembered, but no one ever said the Element part.
I've seen first hand that people aren't crazy about installing an app on their phone called Riot. Hopefully the new name works.
Every time I see news about Riot I immediately think about Riot Games and League of Legends. I guess most people who don't know Element will assume Riot in the context of a messaging app is some client they have done to work alongside LoL. Riot Games is too big for anything else computer-related to manage to succeed, especially if males between 15 and 35 years are a significant part of their target customer base.
I don't even play LoL and I still think of Riot = Riot Games.
I'm willing to bet that was also a factor in their name change. In fact, a quick Google search for Riot brings up Riot games as the first result and the wikipedia entry for them appears on the side bar. So I'm guessing this was the case for the vast majority of Americans.
> If you're pissed about Element, you must be absolutely livid about Apple.
Nope. 'Apple Computer Inc.' already marketed themselves specifically first in 'computers' and that association was built over the years.
After they had success in products that weren't attached to only 'desktop/laptop computers' it made sense to remove 'Computer' from the name.
The same was done for Tesla Motors Inc. to Tesla Inc.
This is more like a full blown renaming of Riot, New Vector, Modular -> Element. You need to rebuild that SEO and previous associations from scratch again.
People talk a lot about apples, but AFAIK there's no other time the singular word "apple" comes up in the English language without an article, other than in reference to the company.
I didn't get that from the comment. Did we read the same comment?
> Apple
Now you're just comparing Apples to Elements. One is a general purpose device, and the other has a specific purpose, providing an opportunity to elude to that purpose through the name.
I've worked for or had Element as a client a couple different times in my career. Each time, it was a different company. The name is rather elementary.
Try googling "element", and then try googling "whatsapp". See the difference?
I get frustrated when brands, products, and even more so OSS software projects, choose names that have too many other meanings/brands associated with them because it can make it unnecessarily difficult to find relevant information using current search engine technology[0]. I've had situations where I've been clicking through pages and pages of results to find something relevant to what I'm looking for, even with more qualified searches.
You can critique WhatsApp for any number of reasons, if you're so inclined, but it's hard to argue that they didn't pick a good name. It's eminently searchable and doesn't spam results pages for unrelated/tangentially related topics.
[0] I find names like "Signal" irritating for the opposite reason. You're searching for information about the other meanings and yet much of what you get is brand "spam" results related to the messaging system. Great if that's what you're searching for, not if it isn't.
May I ask if you are a native english user and what country? Perhaps the branding works for EU markets?
Element has nothing to do with messaging. In my example,signal has something to do with communication(signaling),telegram is obvious, whatsapp is what you say when you talk to someone like 'hello'(what is up?). Element sounds like something I hear about in a chemistry class.
It also has to be catchy. At least Riot was catchy even if it made no sense. A brand name is not a mission stateme t, it's marketing material, full stop.
ICQ has a quirky meaning to it,once you get it,it's like what you use when you seek someone (not really but the mental association is there). Slack? Not sure, it's popular in tech but I've only used it when I have no other choice but I associated it with slacking off (as in when you want to talk informally relax and talk non-work) or having slack (break or headroom),so when someone says let's chat on Slack, I think of a fun interaction that is more akin to taking a break.
But to your point, the only good thing about Skype for example is few syllables and messaging related graphics/logo for me.
Not to ape your message but this, exactly. Element is much better than riot. Now if only I could find it in fdroid or GP.
Joke: I think I'm starting to see the hacker news version of the gell-mann amnesia effect, when you read something you have no opinion of, the hacker news people sound so smart, but when you read something, form your own opinion first, and then arrive at the HN comments to see everyone melting down, you wonder "where did all the smart people go?" 5 minutes later, you are back to being part of the concern mob. :)
How does the name WhatsApp convey a theme of messaging and communication? Signal and Telegram are obvious.
It's worth noting that other services have equally nonsensical names. Skype, Slack. Others, like Line, have only a vague connection that take thinking about to see.
It fails the two syllable rule. All the best companies/bands/groups have two syllable names. If by chance a company succeeds without the two syllable name, a two syllable pseudonym will materialize.
Toshiba, Mercedes, IBM, Microsoft, ycombinator, and my humble employer is Twilio. That is 10 seconds of names off the top of my head. I guess Mercedes is often shortened to Benz.
I feel like you want us to answer the name of the most popular of the four messaging apps in the list, but telegram is the one named after a way of communicating.
Press release pro tip: sidle in what the company or app does very early in. Verging on all of the releases I read on HN don't do this but are for companies I've not heard of. So you leave knowing almost nothing about the company
That's a good point. I've noticed larger enterprises doing this with their pr's, which has always struck me as bit silly when it is a house hold name (Oracle, Canonical, VMWare etc) but ofc not everyone would know them. But for smaller vendors this becomes even more important.
Yes indeed its pretty universal for PLCs to do it.
Some examples to demonstrate
[1] ...LexisNexis® CounselLink®, a leading cloud-based enterprise legal management solution for corporate law departments, today announced the release...
[2] ...RecVue, Inc., the fastest growing next generation order-to-cash automation platform, today announced...
This is one thing I always loved about The Economist - it didn't matter how obvious an entity might seem, they would always qualify what it is when mentioned in an article, never presuming upon their readers' knowledge, eg. "...Google, an internet search engine, ..."
oops, excellent point. I've added "For those discovering us for the first time: Element is the flagship secure collaboration app for the decentralised Matrix communication network." as the 2nd main para.
On mobile (galaxy S5, Firefox), the first and last letters of the text in the header image at https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/ are cut off, so I just see "wm your conversation".
If you dislike the new name, branding, or user experience, instead of arguing over why or why not it is a good decision, I'd encourage you to get yourself involved and be that change.
Before the rebrand, or even any talk user experience and design from Element (Riot), I didn't want to wait and started working on a privacy centric matrix client that focused on branding and user experience. I managed to get E2EE working by myself within a month using the Matrix provided encryption library.
For the record, I don't think Element is a bad name. Regardless of the name itself, this is a massive leap forward for their branding. The user experience seems to have been cleaned up dramatically in the new versions of their iOS and Android apps.
I just tried this on Android from F-Droid. I couldn't get past the login page, unfortunately. Bitwarden popped up to auto fill the form, but it didn't work. I tried typing my credentials manually, but it was rough because of the weird quirks with the text boxes. Why does the carat jump to the last character after every keypress? It made it nearly impossible for me to correct a typo. My password is pretty long, which royally confused the password input field. After a certain number of characters, it just stopped displaying anything. It also does not respect my system preference of not displaying the most recently typed character unmasked. Finally, after all that, I clicked login and the button just changed to a spinner forever.
I realize this is alpha quality software, but to claim to be focused on user experience and have such horrible UI issues does not give me any confidence, sadly.
I've addressed these problems you listed in version 0.0.19 but getting updates to the F-Droid store is a very slow process. The next F-Droid release will have auto updates enabled with the F-Droid team, so those and future issues should be fixed relatively quick from that platform.
Regardless, thanks for trying it out.
Edit: feel free to post issues like this directly to the project in github if you decide to try it out again
Speaking of branding, Dart isn't the best brand either. I mean anyone interested in it would search for Dart language. Just like anyone interested would sarch for Element matrix.
I tried your client with my own synapse instance but couldn't login, no error message. I click the question mark to search for instances, click use my instance, fill in username:instance.tld but nothing happens.
In many respects, Syphon is a good name. Short (two syllables!), memorable, reasonably easy to write and set to become easy to search for.
And yet you've failed.
It's not just that siphoning something off has shady connotations already in general usage[1], but that in tech reporting specifically, it's referring to the mass exfiltration of data:
"How Facebook Was Able to Siphon Off Phone Call and Text Logs"[2]
"StrandHogg 2.0 can also hijack other app permissions to siphon off sensitive user data, like contacts, photos, and track a victim’s real-time location."[3]
"Perhaps the most sinister of them all is an attack designed to siphon off your organisation’s data, otherwise known as data exfiltration."[4]
"Data exfiltration is how hackers siphon out valuable intelligence from a business."[5]
"Report: Chinese Hackers Siphon Off ‘Massive’ Amounts of Undersea Military Data"[6]
To name a messaging app like that might almost seem like overt cynicism to casual observers.
I'm surprised nobody else has pointed this out. What is it that I have missed?
PS: Nice graphics on your website, very pleasant to look at and built with diversity in mind–but what the heck is the dude looking at the black circle supposed to signify? I'd get rid of that one. To be very frank, it appears to be something vulgar to me. O;)
That's been long overdue and will hopefully help Matrix make inroads into more conservative organizations; I believe the tech is really promising. It's a definite liability, trying to introduce people to Matrix, when the de-facto default client's name evokes all kinds of unhelpful associations – it doesn't sound like work at all and it does sound like gamers, toys, apparently even like a far-left political organisation. Element should be fine for everyone.
This comment section is remarkable. If the name change is perceived to be in order to be welcoming to corporate, nobody has a problem with that. Imagine if the name change was perceived to be in order to be more welcoming to underrepresented people. We would have endless discussions about pc culture, and how the name is not bad at all, etc...
Glad you like it, the original idea was to think of Riot in terms of a 'Riot of Colour', though in practice it can be interpreted in lots of different ways.
We think Element has much broader appeal and really like the association with being the smallest indivisible unit.
I can vouch that I avoided deploying it in corp environments due to the questionable name. "Element" is fine and is generic just like "Matrix". So name really does matter (specially in formal/corporate environments).
Even if these "toys" were instrumental in driving technological progress, it makes sense to rename it for "conservative" organisations. Some say the smarter ones should give in, so just make it easy to swallow.
Although I don't see widespread adoption yet if Matrix bridges aren't implemented by the common household names. Conservative organisations use solutions from Apple or Microsoft. There is no deeper thought behind it.
That said, I think they just did it because of trademark issues. Private users are probably converted by their environment and probably don't think too much about the name.
Worth pointing out that some of the largest proponents of Matrix today are governments and civic institutions. The federated nature and ability to self host are really important to them.
More recently the German Education authority has announced that it will roll out a 500K user installation - this is the world’s largest-ever single contract for a collaborative software service (https://sifted.eu/articles/element-germany-deal/)
Git is a term of insult with origins in English denoting an unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. As a mild oath it is roughly on a par with prat and marginally less pejorative than berk.
I've always wondered about that one too. I mean naming is a minefield, but using a name that's well known to be at least mildly offensive in a particular dialect of English is probably something I would have chosen to avoid. I suppose at least they didn't call it "prck", "twt", or "cnt". One has to be grateful for small mercies.
If I'm an organisation, e.g. a company, I don't want end-to-end encryption, I want to make sure I have access to all messages within the company and between employees.
So I'm not sure a tool that is encrypted end-to-end will be that appealing to me not matter the name unless there is a feature around that.
On the other hand, individuals who are savvy enough to look for such a tool may not worry too much about the name.
Element is end to end encrypted by default for private rooms and 1:1 chats, but the Matrix protocol does not mandate the use of end to end encryption since it doesn't make sense for some use cases, particularly for public world readable rooms and IoT application.
I am always surprised when I see projects choosing such general names. This will make SEO and name recognition so much harder. Not adopting such generic names should be elemental wisdom. Guess now at least they are always in their element though. /s
Ironically Riot.im is the 4th hit for me on an incognito VPN'd browser for the word Riot. So I hope that Element will end up with the same visibility :)
Agreed. Catchy names also have 1 to 2 syllables, usually, so Element seems a bit unwieldy. But maybe they want to step back a bit and give the Matrix brand a boost.
People often get confused, they think the word is strong (Nike,Google,...) while the word nearly never is. As you've said it's the other way around, what the company evokes in us with their product over time is brought back to the name.
Agreed. Generic names are difficult to find help on, especially in the software world. Like that modelling tool which was mentioned a while back - "Hash". Imagine googling for "Hash syntax error".
What's next, an ITIL-enabled accounting system called 'IT'?
Yeah - it is a pain trying to search for technical support for overloaded terms. Matrix is an especially bad one given the mathematical terms. I think Riot was a terrible choice for a messenger name, especially for an encrypted one (doing the work of politicians to demonize it for them) but it would still be easier to search for because preciously there weren't IT questions about riots.
I'm not sure what it is with companies just picking a name from the English dictionary. You could be a little more inventive and come up with something either foreign or new-ish. Even a wrong but witty spelling of an existing word would do, but things like Apple, Amazon, Slack, Bird, Riot, Glassdoor... come on.
Not to take away from the tremendous work they're doing but that name really isn't good.
We tried to trademark Element and another generic abbreviation as a combined name and even that was not possible. The german trademark bureau just sent us printed wikipedia articles of both words as "proof" that it's not possible.
After various HN threads about this company, and taking a tour on the element.io website, I'm still not sure what this is about to be honest.
I understand it's a chat app, but
- The pricing is really confusing (seems like the app is free, but having an account is paying ?).
- Is this a professional thing, like slack, or more of a whatsapp-like thing ? Trying to do both ? The whole differentation point seems to be based on the Matrix thing, but it's not really clear why is that important ? (I don't typically care about the backend of the app I use).
I mean, the front page says :
"All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads. Talk to everyone through the open global Matrix network, protected by proper end-to-end encryption."
So, the starter is what everyone says. "Safe from data mining and ads" is good, it makes me curious about what is the pricing then, and I wouldn't mind paying a cheap price for a correct messaging app. And then there's this Matrix bit, and I don't even know if it's good or bad. So I went to the pricing page (which doesn't exist, but there are "plans") and here, well the app is free, and I can get my account hosted either somewhere free, or either on the Element Matrix servers, where it should be safe from eavesdropping ? But with proper end to end encryption, it should be safe everywhere ? Or is the app by default not end to end encrypted, but hosting it somewhere makes it so ? It sounds really weird to be honest.
So really, good for you for renaming, but I don't think it's what will make me change (even though since whatsapp is facebook owned, I'm ready to migrate myself and my whole family on something else once the ads are there).
Matrix is the protocol, Element is a client to access Matrix which it does so via a matrix homeserver (which then federates across the rest of the Matrix).
So Element is free to use, but there are a range of servers to choose from. The matrix.org server is free to use, though as the largest single instance on the public federation is run on a best effort basis.
Alternatives are to either host your own server, or have someone else do that for you. The payment plans that you are looking at reference Element Matrix Services (EMS) which is a SaaS offering allowing you to spin up your own server to be used by whoever you choose to give access to (friends/colleagues etc). The advantages being that you get grater control of your data and improved performance.
Using email as an analogy
Matrix = Email
matrix.org / Matrix Hosted Services/ some other server = Fastmail/Gmail/Hotmail etc
Element = Thunderbird
Matrix is a decentralised e2e-encrypted chat protocol (similar model to email) that you can self-host and is all free software. Encryption is between devices so the homeserver doesn't see the contents, but if you self-host then only the homeservers involved in the chat ever see your encrypted messages -- this is in contrast to centralised services like Signal where everything goes through one entity. You can create a free account on Matrix.org and it works perfectly fine.
But you're quite right that most users might not care about that (though a fair number of people care about having control over their data, which Matrix gives them since you can self-host a federated server).
Element is now an umbrella brand for several things:
* The most widely used cross-platform Matrix client (used to be called Riot and even further back was called Vector).
* A paid service where they will host a Matrix homeserver for you (used to be called Modular). This is what all of the pricing plans you saw are talking about. Unless you want to host your own server and don't want to manage it yourself, this isn't relevant for you.
* The legal entity which hired people to develop those things as well as contribute to Matrix (used to be called VectorLabs).
This isn't really that big of an announcement, Matrix has existed for at least 5 years now and I've been using it for a while. It's just that a common complaint (the scatter-brained branding) is being resolved by giving a single name to all of these parts (save Matrix -- the protocol -- which is keeping its name).
Readit News
The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!
Matrix,Riot and Libolm are epic projects, I wish them all the success but man, even Riot was a hard sell as a brand. I would seriously be dissapointed if it loses popularity over this. I don't think the project maintainers understand that their core users/fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.
People who don't know tech rely on branding/brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.
Which of these is unlike the others?
1) Signal
2) Telegram
3) Element
4) Whatsapp
Hint: The theme is messaging and communication.
Also, many people don't get the meaning/pun in the name at all (which probably is one of the reasons for writing it wrong). Even to me, with a good English level, it wasn't immediate because "what's up" is a very idiomatic greeting and not one that non-natives (or at least, Spanish people) tend to use in a natural way. It took some time to click in my mind.
That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.
But it's clearly worked out well for them, so I guess it's a good thing people like me weren't involved in their naming. shrug
This was the case, but the market has changed. At the time, here in Spain Whatsapp was marketed as "like text, but free". We were still spending about 12 cents per SMS back then, or buying silly packages like "100 sms for 10 euro", so getting it was a no brainer. Anyone could have sold that idea.
Nowadays, however, whatsapp is so ubiquitous that I'm not even sure they can be replaced anytime soon, so if someone wants to undertake that task they better have all the help they can get.
But yeah Element is arguably even worse, it's a super common noun and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with communication.
But in the end these naming discussions are always going to end up as bikeshedding. If the tech is good it'll probably manage to be successful despite its mediocre name.
You must be some scientist? I don't see people crying over the company name Apple.
People need to be able to find the Element app with a search of Matrix. So the Element Matrix client should work nicely. Working with a company that used Element as part of it's brand name, it was remembered, but no one ever said the Element part. I've seen first hand that people aren't crazy about installing an app on their phone called Riot. Hopefully the new name works.
I'm willing to bet that was also a factor in their name change. In fact, a quick Google search for Riot brings up Riot games as the first result and the wikipedia entry for them appears on the side bar. So I'm guessing this was the case for the vast majority of Americans.
I like the new name.
If you're pissed about Element, you must be absolutely livid about Apple.
Nope. 'Apple Computer Inc.' already marketed themselves specifically first in 'computers' and that association was built over the years.
After they had success in products that weren't attached to only 'desktop/laptop computers' it made sense to remove 'Computer' from the name. The same was done for Tesla Motors Inc. to Tesla Inc.
This is more like a full blown renaming of Riot, New Vector, Modular -> Element. You need to rebuild that SEO and previous associations from scratch again.
I didn't get that from the comment. Did we read the same comment?
> Apple
Now you're just comparing Apples to Elements. One is a general purpose device, and the other has a specific purpose, providing an opportunity to elude to that purpose through the name.
I get frustrated when brands, products, and even more so OSS software projects, choose names that have too many other meanings/brands associated with them because it can make it unnecessarily difficult to find relevant information using current search engine technology[0]. I've had situations where I've been clicking through pages and pages of results to find something relevant to what I'm looking for, even with more qualified searches.
You can critique WhatsApp for any number of reasons, if you're so inclined, but it's hard to argue that they didn't pick a good name. It's eminently searchable and doesn't spam results pages for unrelated/tangentially related topics.
[0] I find names like "Signal" irritating for the opposite reason. You're searching for information about the other meanings and yet much of what you get is brand "spam" results related to the messaging system. Great if that's what you're searching for, not if it isn't.
Element has nothing to do with messaging. In my example,signal has something to do with communication(signaling),telegram is obvious, whatsapp is what you say when you talk to someone like 'hello'(what is up?). Element sounds like something I hear about in a chemistry class.
It also has to be catchy. At least Riot was catchy even if it made no sense. A brand name is not a mission stateme t, it's marketing material, full stop.
Riot has a political connotation. It's good not to have to try and sell to other people that you're on "riot".
Slack comes to mind. Or, I seek you?
But to your point, the only good thing about Skype for example is few syllables and messaging related graphics/logo for me.
Joke: I think I'm starting to see the hacker news version of the gell-mann amnesia effect, when you read something you have no opinion of, the hacker news people sound so smart, but when you read something, form your own opinion first, and then arrive at the HN comments to see everyone melting down, you wonder "where did all the smart people go?" 5 minutes later, you are back to being part of the concern mob. :)
It's worth noting that other services have equally nonsensical names. Skype, Slack. Others, like Line, have only a vague connection that take thinking about to see.
See the list of services mentioned in Wikipedia's IM template; only half of them mention chat, talk, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Instant_messaging
I should note that I'm not saying I agree it's a good name (I don't have an opinion on that, personally), just that it's not unusual.
“Do you have Element?”
is less confusing than
“Do you have Signal?”
Hmm, which sounds better?
"Let's chat on the 'ment"
"Let's chat on Ele"
I'm trying to guess which will get used. I'm thinking the second one.
Or maybe just drop the 'e' and say "Let's talk on el'ment"?
That might confuse some Europeans though, maybe just "e'ment" is better.
What was wrong with Riot anyway? It wasn't the best name but it was known. Most name changes are mistakes.
So what is your point?
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Some examples to demonstrate
[1] ...LexisNexis® CounselLink®, a leading cloud-based enterprise legal management solution for corporate law departments, today announced the release...
[2] ...RecVue, Inc., the fastest growing next generation order-to-cash automation platform, today announced...
etc
[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lexisnexis-counsell... [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/recvue-achieves-soc...
- ed: typo
Deleted Comment
Before the rebrand, or even any talk user experience and design from Element (Riot), I didn't want to wait and started working on a privacy centric matrix client that focused on branding and user experience. I managed to get E2EE working by myself within a month using the Matrix provided encryption library.
https://syphon.org
https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon
For the record, I don't think Element is a bad name. Regardless of the name itself, this is a massive leap forward for their branding. The user experience seems to have been cleaned up dramatically in the new versions of their iOS and Android apps.
I realize this is alpha quality software, but to claim to be focused on user experience and have such horrible UI issues does not give me any confidence, sadly.
Regardless, thanks for trying it out.
Edit: feel free to post issues like this directly to the project in github if you decide to try it out again
I tried your client with my own synapse instance but couldn't login, no error message. I click the question mark to search for instances, click use my instance, fill in username:instance.tld but nothing happens.
It works with RiotX.
And yet you've failed.
It's not just that siphoning something off has shady connotations already in general usage[1], but that in tech reporting specifically, it's referring to the mass exfiltration of data:
"How Facebook Was Able to Siphon Off Phone Call and Text Logs"[2]
"StrandHogg 2.0 can also hijack other app permissions to siphon off sensitive user data, like contacts, photos, and track a victim’s real-time location."[3]
"Perhaps the most sinister of them all is an attack designed to siphon off your organisation’s data, otherwise known as data exfiltration."[4]
"Data exfiltration is how hackers siphon out valuable intelligence from a business."[5]
"Report: Chinese Hackers Siphon Off ‘Massive’ Amounts of Undersea Military Data"[6]
To name a messaging app like that might almost seem like overt cynicism to casual observers.
I'm surprised nobody else has pointed this out. What is it that I have missed?
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sipho...
[2] https://newstalk1290.com/how-facebook-was-able-to-siphon-off...
[3] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/strandhogg-malicious-apps-...
[4] https://www.csa.gov.sg/gosafeonline/go-safe-for-business/sme...
[5] https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2017/10/02/dns-exfiltration/
[6] https://threatpost.com/report-chinese-hackers-siphon-off-mas...
PS: Nice graphics on your website, very pleasant to look at and built with diversity in mind–but what the heck is the dude looking at the black circle supposed to signify? I'd get rid of that one. To be very frank, it appears to be something vulgar to me. O;)
We think Element has much broader appeal and really like the association with being the smallest indivisible unit.
Still doesn't make any sense ...
Plenty of popular tools with questionable names. Splunk and slack comes to mind.
Probably doesn't happen often, but there's people when they have a few alternatives they'll just throw the strange sounding one out first.
Although I don't see widespread adoption yet if Matrix bridges aren't implemented by the common household names. Conservative organisations use solutions from Apple or Microsoft. There is no deeper thought behind it.
That said, I think they just did it because of trademark issues. Private users are probably converted by their environment and probably don't think too much about the name.
The French government's installation has been in the public domain for sometime (https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed...)
More recently the German Education authority has announced that it will roll out a 500K user installation - this is the world’s largest-ever single contract for a collaborative software service (https://sifted.eu/articles/element-germany-deal/)
Git is a term of insult with origins in English denoting an unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. As a mild oath it is roughly on a par with prat and marginally less pejorative than berk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)
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So I'm not sure a tool that is encrypted end-to-end will be that appealing to me not matter the name unless there is a feature around that.
On the other hand, individuals who are savvy enough to look for such a tool may not worry too much about the name.
There are organisations today that use Element without e2ee, though in practice we find that most see e2ee as a plus point - especially with the recent UX improvements (https://element.io/blog/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-sign...).
Eg, I just Googled element: "About 2,480,000,000 results (0.68 seconds)"
(Really though, Slack is as generic of a word as Element! It just had a strong connotation now)
What's next, an ITIL-enabled accounting system called 'IT'?
Not to take away from the tremendous work they're doing but that name really isn't good.
Edit: They have mentioned this in the blog. Please read that before downvoting.
I understand it's a chat app, but
- The pricing is really confusing (seems like the app is free, but having an account is paying ?). - Is this a professional thing, like slack, or more of a whatsapp-like thing ? Trying to do both ? The whole differentation point seems to be based on the Matrix thing, but it's not really clear why is that important ? (I don't typically care about the backend of the app I use).
I mean, the front page says : "All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads. Talk to everyone through the open global Matrix network, protected by proper end-to-end encryption."
So, the starter is what everyone says. "Safe from data mining and ads" is good, it makes me curious about what is the pricing then, and I wouldn't mind paying a cheap price for a correct messaging app. And then there's this Matrix bit, and I don't even know if it's good or bad. So I went to the pricing page (which doesn't exist, but there are "plans") and here, well the app is free, and I can get my account hosted either somewhere free, or either on the Element Matrix servers, where it should be safe from eavesdropping ? But with proper end to end encryption, it should be safe everywhere ? Or is the app by default not end to end encrypted, but hosting it somewhere makes it so ? It sounds really weird to be honest.
So really, good for you for renaming, but I don't think it's what will make me change (even though since whatsapp is facebook owned, I'm ready to migrate myself and my whole family on something else once the ads are there).
So Element is free to use, but there are a range of servers to choose from. The matrix.org server is free to use, though as the largest single instance on the public federation is run on a best effort basis.
Alternatives are to either host your own server, or have someone else do that for you. The payment plans that you are looking at reference Element Matrix Services (EMS) which is a SaaS offering allowing you to spin up your own server to be used by whoever you choose to give access to (friends/colleagues etc). The advantages being that you get grater control of your data and improved performance.
Using email as an analogy
Matrix = Email matrix.org / Matrix Hosted Services/ some other server = Fastmail/Gmail/Hotmail etc Element = Thunderbird
But you're quite right that most users might not care about that (though a fair number of people care about having control over their data, which Matrix gives them since you can self-host a federated server).
Element is now an umbrella brand for several things:
* The most widely used cross-platform Matrix client (used to be called Riot and even further back was called Vector).
* A paid service where they will host a Matrix homeserver for you (used to be called Modular). This is what all of the pricing plans you saw are talking about. Unless you want to host your own server and don't want to manage it yourself, this isn't relevant for you.
* The legal entity which hired people to develop those things as well as contribute to Matrix (used to be called VectorLabs).
This isn't really that big of an announcement, Matrix has existed for at least 5 years now and I've been using it for a while. It's just that a common complaint (the scatter-brained branding) is being resolved by giving a single name to all of these parts (save Matrix -- the protocol -- which is keeping its name).